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Fan Male: Kicking For A Cure
Georgia Force player scores against ovarian cancer.
by Allison Shirreffs
June 1, 2008
I
t's a professional football player's job to tackle the opposition. Although members of
the opposing team may not always be easy to stop, they do the favor of making themselves easy to
identify by wearing a uniform and following a distinct set
of rules.
Not so with
ovarian cancer. "It's not a fair disease at all," says Libby King, executive director of the
Ovarian Cancer Institute. "It doesn't give you the opportunity to fight
it." Which is why it took a while for Carlos Martinez, kicker for the
Arena Football League's Georgia Force, to wrap his mind around the fact that Colleen Drury, the
mother of a good friend, could be diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer despite having
experienced few- if any - symptoms.
In fact, it wasn't until Drury had returned from a rafting trip with her daughter that she
noticed anything at all, and then it was more a gut feeling than a symptom. "She just felt
something wasn't right," Martinez recalls. She went to a doctor, who discovered a tumor the size of
large grapefruit on Drury's ovary.
According to King, Drury's experience is incredibly common. A disease mostly of
postmenopausal women older than 55, ovarian cancer's signs and symptoms-such as bloating, shortness
of breath and stomach pain-are easily, and often, attributed to less menacing things. Despite its
relatively undetectable onset, ovarian cancer is ruthless. Less than a quarter of women diagnosed
with stage three ovarian cancers will survive more than five years. Drury is one of the lucky ones.
Her tumor responded well to chemotherapy and was greatly reduced in size before being
removed.
As Martinez watched ovarian cancer affect Drury's whole family, he wondered what he could do
to help. "It was so real what she went through," Martinez says.
His epiphany didn't take long. As a kicker for a professional football team, Martinez, and
with a thumbs up from the Georgia Force, created Kicking for the Cure. For every extra point and
field goal he makes in the 2008 season, Martinez will donate money to the Atlanta-based Ovarian
Cancer Institute, an organization dedicated to developing innovative research that will lead to the
early detection and treatment of ovarian cancer. Researchers from some local universities, such as
Georgia Tech, Emory and Clark Atlanta, are working together at OCI to develop an early detection
test and subsequent treatments for a cancer that takes the lives of approximately 15,000 women each
year.
Because kickers in the AFL play a more active role than kickers in the National Football
League (the AFL has no punting, and the field is much shorter), donations of $10 for every extra
point and $25 for every field goal add up. The 2008 season goes until late June, and after nine
games Martinez had amassed 55 extra points and four field goals. He also has increased awareness in
a crowd not prone to thinking about ovarian cancer. The response he's gotten illustrates the reach
this disease has.
"There are all these stories I didn't hear until after I started the fundraiser," he says.
Players, fans and others who hear about Kicking for the Cure tell Martinez about their sisters,
aunts, mothers, wives and friends who've been affected by ovarian cancer. Although kicking to raise
money does add a little bit of pressure to every kick he sets up to make, he's game if it means
that anything he does can prevent today's little girls from growing up and dying from ovarian
cancer. "It's rewarding," he says.
Georgia Force owner Arthur Blank is matching Martinez's efforts, and Georgia Force fans can
make donations at games and through the team's web site. Proceeds from wristbands and T-shirts sold
at games also go to the cause.
Martinez, the second oldest in a family of four boys and three girls, grew up in Nebraska.
He was a standout athlete as a wrestler, soccer and football player. When it came time to go to
college, Martinez turned down a scholarship to a Division I school to accept a scholarship to Buena
Vista University in Iowa, a small Division III school, because he wanted to play somewhere he could
make a difference.
That he did. He ranks second on the Division III all-time field goal list, and as a junior
in 2001, he was named Division III Kicker of the Year. His abilities caught the eye of several NFL
teams, and after college, he was invited to training camp with the Philadelphia Eagles. He spent
time with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Dallas Cowboys and the Atlanta Falcons before becoming a
kicker for the AFL's Dallas Desperados in 2006. In 2007, the Desperados traded him to the Georgia
Force.
Besides his job as a kicker for the Georgia Force, Martinez is president of the Diesel
Fighting Championships, a mixed martial arts league he created in 2005. The league operates under
Martinez Productions Inc. His younger brother, Alonzo Martinez, is a fighter in the
league.
Martinez had several mentors as a young adult. He is aware of the impact he, as a
professional athlete, can have on someone's life. "I try to be the best role model I can be," he
says. "I looked up to a lot of people when I was growing up, and I always carried that with
me."
Before and after games, he does his best to connect with the kids. He's a regular visitor at
children's hospitals and is committed to continuing his fight against ovarian cancer. "I'm not a
millionaire getting paid lots of money," he says. "I'm just trying to make a difference."
